1014. 
ruts RURAL NEW-YORKER 
•267 
Low Price of Sweet Potatoes. 
Our section will be half a million dol¬ 
lars short this year by reason of prices 
on sweet potatoes. That means hardship 
for they use from $15 up per acre of fer¬ 
tilizer. Our Italian farmers, where 
father and the whole family works, have 
the advantage. Why is the price so low? 
Vineland, N. J. g. ii. m. 
It is hard to say definitely just why 
sweet potatoes should be so low at this 
time, but I am inclined to attribute it 
to a combination of conditions rather 
than to any one thing. The final esti¬ 
mates of the Department of Agriculture 
place the production of sweets at 59,- 
057.000 bushels in 1913 as against 55,- 
479.000 bushels in 1912 and 54,538,000 
in 1911, showing . n increase over last 
year of three and one-half million bushels. 
This larger yield has undoubtedly had 
some effect <>n prices, but in all prob¬ 
ability the effect on the market from that 
source is not nearly so great as from 
the fact (brought out in recent New 
York reports ) that many sweets, especial¬ 
ly from the South are arriving on the 
market poor in quality and in bad shape. 
This is demoralizing, and helps to bring 
the price of good stock to a lower level. 
From several local points reports have 
come saying sweets were not keeping 
well and that they were being marketed to 
avoid further loss and shrinkage. If 
this is quite general there is no doubt 
that the market is affected from this 
source also. Then too, there is again 
the question of unequal distribution, and 
the many others that enter into market¬ 
ing produce of all kinds. 
Just now everything seems to be con¬ 
spiring against the sweet potato grower, 
but being a Jerseyman, I am inclined to 
look on the bright side of the matter. 
Sweets have been low before. My father 
tells of a time, some 25 or 30 years ago, 
when he carted sweet potatoes 2*4 miles 
over a sandy road, taking only 12 bar¬ 
rels at a two-liorse load, and received 
SO cents a barrel for them. And the 
barrels held just as much then as they do 
now. There was also a period of low 
prices for sweets between 1S92 and 1896. 
There was one season at that time when 
sweet potatoes sold in the Fall for 50 
to 60 cents a barrel. A neighboring | 
grower did not wish to sell for those 
figures at digging time, so stored a good 
portion of his crop in a vacant room in 
his dwelling. But prices did not go up, 
and he took them out later for 40 cents a 
barrel, and lost considerable through 
shrinkage. Sweet potato growing at that 
time was certainly no get-rich-quick 
scheme, and many said that the Jersey 
grower would no longer be able to com¬ 
pete with the South. But since then 
there have been many good years for the 
sweet potato grower, and the Jersey 
sweet potato has come to be a greater fac¬ 
tor in the market than ever. 
A recent New York report says “Sweet 
potatoes plentiful and the market grad¬ 
ually declining under a very dull trade; 
Jersey No. 1 were quoted at $1.50 to 
$1.90 per barrel and Southern at 75 to 
$1 a barrel.” Such a report as that is 
certainly not very encouraging for the 
man with a large bin of stored sweets. 
But it does show that the consuming pub¬ 
lic is willing to pay almost 100% more 
for the Jersey sweets, and if the sweet 
potato growers are going to be driven 
out of business because of low prices, the 
Jersey men will certainly not be the first 
to go. I believe the man who can grow 
a crop of sweet potatoes, and who has 
grit enough to hold on, will find that the 
law of averages will square things up for 
him in the long run no matter where he 
lives, but if he hails from Jersey the 
"long run” will be a “jiffy.” 
TRUCKER, JR. 
Importance of Spraying. 
I have an orchard of about 1,000 apple 
trees 15 years old. I cannot find any 
San Jose scale on them this Winter; 
have been spraying them with lime-sul¬ 
phur, using a power sprayer. I wish to 
know if it is best to omit the dormant 
spray or will it pay to spray anyway 
for scab and fungi? E. T. 
New Jersey. 
Wo should spray on general principle, 
whether you can find scale or not. This 
is the safe way to be sure of good fruit. 
We skipped spraying one year when scale 
was not visible, and lost 10 times the 
cost of spraying. 
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